Here are twelve of the most exciting coffees that we reviewed over the past year. Perhaps they illustrate a paradox, a version of the old saw about when the going gets tough the tough get tougher. Although green coffee prices generally spent a good part of 2004 exploring all-time lows and growers as a group suffered greatly, more really distinguished coffees showed up in our reviews than every before.

Top Twelve Coffees of 2004

1

95

Bucks County Coffee Roasters

Kenya AA, 2003 Crop

2

94

Thanksgiving Coffee

Nicaragua Maracatura Organic

3

94

Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea

El Salvador Montecarlos

4

93

Terroir Select Coffees

Nicaragua Madriz

5

94

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

Kenya AA

6

92

Stumptown Coffee Roasters

El Salvador Las Nubitas

7

93

Paradise Roasters

Espresso

8

92

Flying Goat Coffee

Espresso Ticino

9

93

Bucks County Coffee Roasters

Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

10

92

Bayview Farm

Kona Extra Fancy

11

92

Terroir Select Coffees

Brazil Daterra Farm, Northern Italian Espresso

12

91

The Supreme Bean

Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

Some highlights:

• At a time when the Kenyan coffee industry is suffering through the greatest crisis in its distinguished history owing to the stress of low prices, two great Kenyas and several very, very good ones turned up, led by the year’s highest-rated coffee, the 95-rated Bucks County 2003 Kenya, followed by the superb 94-rated version from Green Mountain.

• At a time when industry pundits declare a state of irreversible consolidation of the specialty industry and its inevitable domination by fewer and fewer larger and larger companies, our ’boutique espressos’ review turned up a startlingly fine assortment of very fine and distinctive espresso blends from tiny roasting companies, including the Paradise Roasters Espresso (highest rated espresso of the year at 93) and Flying Goat’s Espresso Ticino (92).

• Although Ethiopia, with Kenya the other giant of East Africa coffee, has been suffering through its own price-generated crisis, several fine examples of the great floral and citrus Yirgacheffe cup turned up on the review table this year, including the 93-rated Bucks County Yirgacheffe and the tactfully dark-roasted Yirgacheffe from the Supreme Bean (91).

• Initiatives to assist coffee growers in their time of crisis grew in number and impact throughout 2004. Although several outstanding Fair-Trade, organic, and relationship coffees turned up in our reviews, the most striking of all for the second straight year was the lavishly fruity, fragrant Organic Maragocatur from Nicaraguan farmer Byron Corrales, roasted by Thanksgiving Coffee. This coffee highlighted still another trend, which is increasingly close relationships between growers and roasters, and a tendency for globally savvy growers to take a more proactive role in creation of unique coffee types, in this case a farm-generated hybrid of the big-beaned Maragogipe and the dwarf caturra varieties of arabica.

• At a time when prices paid for green coffees generally hit all-time lows, the prices paid for some lots of green coffees hit all-time highs, owing to the success of the Cup of Excellence and other competition/auctions aimed at identifying the finest green coffees of the year produced in participating growing countries. Our November 2004 review of Cup of Excellence competition winners from Central America produced the year’s highest collective ratings, as well as the year’s highest prices. Three of the many highlight coffees from that article are revisited here: two El Salvadors, one from Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea (El Salvador Montecarlos, 94) and one from Stumptown Coffee Roasters (El Salvador Las Nubitas, 92), together with the delicately elegant Nicaragua Madriz (93) from Terroir Select Coffees.

• Finally, the Kona Extra Fancy from Bayview Farms at 92 proves again that, despite the conviction among many coffee professionals that Hawaii Konas do not live up to their sand-and-sun-driven reputation, the finest Konas from the best mills and farms in fact are well able to hold their sensory own against the best coffees from the rest of the world.

A last word of caution to the coffee buyer: In many cases the actual lots of green coffee on which these reviews were based have been roasted, consumed and enjoyed. Currently they exist only in the memories of those fortunate enough to have tasted them. New lots of the same coffees, or new versions of the same blends, may be just as good as the ones reviewed here, perhaps even better, but they will not be quite the same. Even more so than wine, coffee is a teasing, seductive child of the ever-changing collaboration between changing culture and the unpredictable whimsies of nature.

Kenneth Davids is a coffee expert, author and co-founder of Coffee Review. He has been involved with coffee since the early 1970s and has published three books on coffee, including the influential Home Roasting: Romance and Revival, now in its second edition, and Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing and Enjoying, which has sold nearly 250,000 copies over five editions. His workshops and seminars on coffee sourcing, evaluation and communication have been featured at professional coffee meetings on six continents.